The Little Things

Friends and family who come to visit us often ask us what it's like to do daily little things in Mexico City-- like pay the bills or throw the trash. Some things have been quite a change from what we were used to, and many times we had to be schooled about how things work around here once it sunk in that no, we are not on vacation, we live here now.

The random people who knock on our door are classic. Every once in awhile the cops swing by and ask for a "donation" for watching our neighborhood. Umm...isn't that their job? So we now have to budget them in to our expenses because we don't want them on our bad side. Other random people have also come to our door like the ant guy. A guy who carries a spray tank occassionally knocks on the door and asks to get paid for spraying the outside of our house for ants. We never asked him to spray, but that's not the point. If you refuse, then he'll say, but I already sprayed, now you have to pay me. Who knows if that spray tank even has ant poison.

Because the Mexico City post office and mail system is so unreliable, people here do not mail checks anywhere. We are still waiting on a gift that was sent to us months ago. We will probably never see it. So whatever can't be paid online has to be done the good ol' fashion way--waiting forever in lines. However, unlike in the States, bills here can be paid at a bank.

Every week, a little old man with a cart comes and rings the doorbell to collect the trash. We are not allowed to put a trash bin out on the curb. So we hand the man our trash bags, give him some pesos and he stuffs our trash into the cart. We are lucky, though. The trash guy comes pretty often in our neighborhood since we live amongst some big wigs. But every once in awhile the little old man forgets to swing by and we have to wait till he remembers.

There are a lot more other daily little things, but these are the ones off the top of my head. I'll include some of the more quirky ones in future posts.